College recruitment dissatisfies Chinese

A survey on Tuesday revealed Chinese people are dissatisfied with the country's college recruitment system, with many saying they know people who have benefitted from recruitment corruption. According to the survey, conducted by the China Youth Daily among 18,272 people, more than 90 percent of people believe severe corruption exists in university recruitment and 87.7 percent of respondents stated that they know people who have entered universities through bribery. The survey also shows that 85.3 percent of people trust national college entrance exams, while only 7.3 percent of people trust independent recruitment, which provides preferential policies for entering universities. Yan Shu (alias), a Renmin University student from east China's Jiangsu Province, was recommended to sit the university's independent recruitment exams three years ago for his good performance in math and physics competitions. After written exams and an interview, Yan was able to enter the university with a lower entry score. However, Yan recalled the flaws and fraud in the recruitment process, such as unpublished recommendation lists, lack of supervision of interviews, and bribery. According to the survey, people held a negative view of independent recruitment, with a lack of transparency, money-and-power oriented recruitment and inequity in rural and backward areas cited as the top three perceived problems. Only 14.1 percent think independent recruitment is a positive complement to the college entrance exams. Xiong Bingqi, deputy head of the 21st Century Education Research Institute, said that college recruitment corruption has not been eradicated, even though it first gained people's attention in the 1990s. Xiong said that a lack of supervision over the administrative power of higher educational institutions has caused more recruitment corruption. He suggested publishing more relevant information on students' performance such as academic scores and interview assessments in order to be supervised by the public. Zhang Yaqun, vice director with the research center of examination of Xiamen University, suggested building a credibility mechanism, standardizing recruitment assessment and improving the accountability system.